Summer 2016
Instructor: Vincent Toro

6 weeks: July 24th to August 28th

Tuition: $250

Piri Thomas once famously said “every child is born a poet.” But something happens as we grow into our adult self that atrophies our poetic imagination. This six week online poetry workshop will focus on generating new work by engaging in “focused play” to flex your creativity and your imagination.

Writing prompts and reading materials will be assigned each week, with the goal of learning more about the craft of poetry while creating a new body of work. Each writer will be challenged to write 10-20 pages of new work that will also be workshopped by peers using a variation of choreographer Liz Lerman’s critical response process. This method, which was devised initially for offering productive feedback in the creation of new performing arts work, is a pro-artist alternative to the sometimes clinical workshop method of most MFA programs and writing workshops. In this method, rather than giving the readers license to “cut up” a work after limited exposure to a work of art, the artist/writer is empowered by guiding parts of the discussion and is able to seek more precise and practical responses to his/her work in progress.

In keeping with Kweli’s mission, most of the readings will be contemporary poets of color from the states and around the world. Students will also be asked to read a nonfiction work of their own choosing.

Group meetings will take place online, once a week on Sundays from 12pm-2pm eastern time, using a media platform TBA. Peer work and one-on-one consultation will happen continuously and throughout the 6 week session.

Please email us at workshops@kwelijournal.org if you have any questions or concerns. 



Vincent Toro is a Puerto Rican poet, playwright, and educator living in The Bronx. He is the author of Stereo. Island. Mosaic. (Ahsahta Press) and winner of the 2015 Sawtooth Poetry Prize (Ed Roberson, Judge). He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Rutgers University. Toro is a Pushcart Prize nominee, a finalist for the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize, recipient of an associate artist residency with the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and a member of The Macondo Writer’s Foundation. His poems have been published in Word is Bond, Rattapallax, Vallum, Bordersenses, Kweli Literary Journal, The Buenos Aires Review, and in the anthologies Coloring Book: An Anthology of Multicultural Poems and Stories, CHORUS and The Waiting Room Reader 2.